I wonder if Microsoft is feeling a bit Chris Crockerish when it comes to the three Red Lights of doom on their 360 systems. IGN posted that the independent company which ran their own study on all these 360’s dying has backed up their claim of the 16% Failure Rate. The scary thing is this number could actually be higher.

The company(SquareTrade) tracked 1040 Xbox 360’s which included 27 Elites, 57 Cores, and 956 premiums. Out of the 1040, 171 of them had problems. About 60% of the 171(102) were stricken with the RROD. Squaretrade posted up a nifty chart to show the progess.

SquareTrade told IGN that if they would have continued to keep tracking systems(longer than the 6 month-10 month period for this experiment) the Failure Rate would have for sure kept going up.

Also, because the report only tracked the sample for between six and 10 months after warranty purchase, SquareTrade said the failure rate may be low. If tracking would have continued for 24 to 36 months, the company said “the fail rate is certain to go up.”

4 Responses

It seems like it’s pretty difficult for them to make such a claim given they tested 1,000 out of 10+ million. They have little research to back up that it would go up significantly… for all we know it would continue to hover around 16%.

I know this sucks and it has affect most of us. It’s affected me. At the same time, I don’t know what more can be done about it. The system should be scrapped and entirely remodeled, as opposed to MS just rigging new parts into the things.

These reports always strike me as futile and, in a way, pointless beyond further depressing the owners. If it’s 30% then what? MS would still have the same replacement plan and nothing would be much different for most of us compared to if it was 10%. I guess it could better facilitate some consumer lawsuits, but that’s all I can think of lol.